Harry T. Burleigh

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean E. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Art Song ◽  
American Music ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Antonin Dvorak ◽  
Black Composers ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Leading Role

Harry T. Burleigh (1866–1949) played a leading role in American music, and African American music in particular, in the twentieth century. Celebrated for his arrangements of spirituals, Burleigh was also the first African American composer to create a significant body of art song. An international roster of opera and recital singers performed his works and praised them as among the best of their time. This book traces Burleigh's life from his Pennsylvania childhood through his fifty-year tenure as soloist at St. George's Episcopal Church in Manhattan. As a composer, Burleigh's pioneering work preserved and transformed the African American spiritual; as a music editor, he facilitated the work of other black composers; as a role model, vocal coach, and mentor, he profoundly influenced American song; and in private life he was friends with Antonín Dvořák, Marian Anderson, Will Marion Cook, and other American luminaries. The book provides rich historical, social, and political contexts that explore Burleigh's professional and personal life within an era complicated by changes in race relations, class expectations, and musical tastes.

Bringing Spirituals to the Concert Stage

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean E. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Art Song ◽  
Art Songs ◽  
American Music ◽  
American Composers ◽  
Black Composers ◽  
White American ◽  
African American Music

This chapter focuses on the popularity of Harry T. Burleigh's spirituals in recitals and other concerts. Burleigh published his first solo arrangement of spirituals from 1911 to 1916, at a time when the tide of interest in African American folk music, especially spirituals, was gathering momentum. At least nineteen white American composers joined the stream. Black composers also produced compositions reflecting their folk heritage during these years. From the 1916–1917 concert season, when his solo arrangement of “Deep River” became the hit of the recital season, Burleigh's role as pioneer arranger and interpreter of spirituals began to eclipse his role as recital singer and art song composer. This chapter explores how the recurring controversy over the origins of African American music made Burleigh a spokesman for the uniquely expressive gifts of African Americans who, he argued, had created America's first genuine folk music. In particular, it considers Burleigh's view that the spirituals were the primary artistic contribution of African Americans. It also discusses the influence of Edward MacDowell on Burleigh's movement toward arranging spirituals as art songs.

The Fiery Debate

2021 ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Douglas W. Shadle
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
American Music ◽  
The Political ◽  
Antonin Dvorak ◽  
Musical Identity ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Vernacular Music

About eight months after Antonín Dvořák became director of Jeannette Thurber’s National Conservatory of Music in New York, he weighed in publicly on the question of American musical identity and argued that African American vernacular music (or “negro melodies”) should become the foundation of a national classical style. The New York Herald, which first printed his remarks, stoked a months-long debate that exposed deep-seated anti-Black racism throughout the country’s classical music industry as many musicians rejected the Bohemian’s suggestions outright. Dvořák remained supportive of African American music and musicians but did not fully understand the political implications of his positions.

Introducing Antonín Dvořák to African American Music

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean E. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
New World ◽  
American Music ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Antonin Dvorak ◽  
Artistic Value ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Second Year ◽  
Academic Year

This chapter focuses on how Harry T. Burleigh, during his study at the National Conservatory of Music, became Czech composer Antonín Dvořák's most direct link to the African American music traditions in which he was keenly interested. Burleigh's second year at the conservatory would be a momentous one not only for him but also for the conservatory and for American music when Dvořák was appointed director. By the end of the academic year, Dvořák would complete the composition of his most famous American work, Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, “From the New World.” Burleigh would be intimately involved in the process of its creation. Dvořák validated the artistic value of African Americans' folk music during his time at the conservatory.

scholarly journals Stanley Péan et l’interculturalité en diaspora

Il Tolomeo ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabiana Fianco
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
American Music ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Intercultural Exchange ◽  
Young Writer

In spite of being viewed as a young writer until the ’90s, Stanley Péan is now known as one of the most distinctive and established voices in the Haitian-Canadian literary scene. The pivotal moment in his career happened in 1996, when Zombi Blues was published. This novel displays a cultural space in which Haitian traditions and Canadian modernity converge and allow intercultural exchange to take place. Drawing from this perspective, the following article aims to analyse how Péan creates a fictional universe through the blending of cultural elements. Using the collection of myths and beliefs that permeate the Haitian and African cultural panorama as a reference point, we will investigate the ways in which Péan adapted and transposed these traditions to the Haitian diasporic context. Particular attention will be given to the use of jazz and African American music, as well as to the reinterpretation of mythological creatures such as the zombie and the marasa twins. Hence, the article tries to show how Péan’s cultural crossroad contributes to the foundation of a new literary interpretation of Haitianity.

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